


I Miss You

by SoundandColor



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Beta Wanted, F/M, Post-Season/Series 02, kastle - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-28 20:17:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6343708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SoundandColor/pseuds/SoundandColor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Karen and Frank disagree (and one time they are in perfect accord).</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Miss You

**Author's Note:**

> These two snuck up on me and this fic was born. If anyone wants to look it over for me, I'd be grateful. I hope you enjoy!

She’s lost track of how long she’s been at the Bulletin (at least 14 hours with no end in sight) and the couch in Be— _Karen’s_ —office is lumpy and uncomfortable, but it’ll do. She leans sideways, pulls her knees up to her chest and drags Mr. Ulrich’s blanket across her body. She’s barely gotten into a comfortable position before she’s out like a light.

 

\---

 

Something wakes her, but Karen doesn’t know what because the man across the room isn’t making a sound. She doesn’t either. Doesn’t move an inch. She thinks for a wild moment that it could be Matt (Daredevil, the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen, the goddamn vigilante who kissed her on the steps and never said a word) but he wouldn’t stay quiet for so long and they haven’t spoken in weeks. She can’t rely on him to help her.

She forces Matt from her mind and tries to listen for any other movement in the office. Anyone who could hear her scream and call the police. She thinks of the gun in her safe and knows she’ll never get her hands on it before—

When the light clicks on, she’s damn near blinded, but she’s up and on her feet before she can think twice. “I will not die sitting on the couch,” she thinks. Terrified and angry. “I will not die without putting up a fight.”

“Ms. Walker—”

She’s swinging on the guy before he can finish his sentence, but loses her stance at the tail end. The hit coming in lower than either of them predict. He moves to block and mostly succeeds, but her fist still glances off his jaw. The bone rattling vibration causing a streak of pain up her arm. He moves fast, pulls her limbs in and locks her against his wide chest. She can’t move, she can’t scratch him, she can’t go for another punch and they’re both breathing hard when they finally lock eyes. He looks the same way he did back then. The way she remembers him from that night in the woods ( _I’m already dead_ ).  Blank faced, scary. “Frank.”

He works his jaw and eyes her warily. Finally lets her move out of his space, but he still hasn’t let go of her wrist. “Those bird arms pack a hell of a punch. You been practicing?”

“Yeah, actually. I have.”

“Good. Make sure you get more sleep and they’ll never see you coming.”

She jerks away from his grasp and pulls her arm into her body. “Who asked you? What are you even doing here?”

“I’ve been reading your articles.” He shakes his head and straightens his back up. “You’re going to get yourself hurt.”

She’d heard enough of that from Matt when they were still trying to pretend like they were friends. She hears enough of that from Foggy when he can make the time to venture down from his corner office. She doesn’t need to hear it from this man. “And you’re what?  Here to save me?”

“I’m here ‘cause there’s still work to be done and you got a real knack for drawing bad guys.”

She scoffs and rakes her hair out of her face. “Present company included.”

“I never pretended to be anything else, but you tried to help me once. I feel like I owe you something.”

“Well let me unburden you. I don’t need—“

“Oh for fucks sake!” he yells, throwing his hand up. “I know you don’t need my help, but I’ve been around—“

“I’ve never seen you.

“Well I’ve seen _you_ and you look like shit.”

She laughs a little at that and sits back on the couch. She’s kept up with him, too, of course. Four murders at the docks a month and half ago. A would be robber gunned down at a bodega six weeks later. That last night, Karen vowed that if he pulled the trigger, he would be dead to her. Now here he was, alive if worse for wear, insulting her in her own goddamn office.

“Exhaustion makes you stupid,” he starts after a stretch of quiet. “It makes you slow. If you’re going to do dangerous work, you can’t be sloppy. I was here for a good ten minutes before you woke up and if I’d been anyone else—”

“I could be dead.” Karen rubs her face. “I’m well aware.” She can feel his eyes on her, but he doesn’t speak and she doesn’t know how long she’s sat there, her head in her hands, when he tosses something into her lap. She peeks through her fingers to find a very familiar looking Twinkie. “Did you get this out of my desk?”

“What does it matter? Eat it.”

She does.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

“You were wrong.”

“Huh?”

“That night in the diner. You were wrong about Matt. About me and Matt, I mean.”

He leans back in his chair and tilts his head to the side. They’re eating dinner together. Not that she’d invited him over so much as he’d shown up at her new place like he does from time to time, she’d offered out of politeness and he’d been too long between good meals to let her off the hook.  He hadn’t expected her to try and engage him in conversation and part of him wants to say that he doesn’t care. That he could give a fuck less if she was ever in love with that asshole. That he isn’t the slightest bit interested in who she shares a bed with. Frank crosses his arms over his chest and looks at her for a moment, “We do girl talk now? We gonna get our nails done, next?”

“He lied,” she says, ignoring his gibe and taking another sip. This would be her third glass of wine if his count is right and it always is, but she’s a grown woman in her own house. It’s none of his business. “He lied and he kept secrets and he didn’t trust me. He didn’t trust me enough to believe in me. To tell me the truth. He let me think that we had something special when he was—”

She drops off suddenly and Frank wonders what brought this up. If it has to do with that Murdock prick being Red, but if she doesn’t know, the very last thing he wants to do is insert himself into _that_. He takes a swallow of water and clears his throat. “Dicked around on you, huh?”

She narrows her eyes, but doesn’t acknowledge the question. “He hurt me, Frank,” and hearing her say it—no bullshit excuses, just laying it out there straight—makes his fist clench in a way it hadn’t the first time they’d gone over it. Before _this_ , whatever _this_ is, began. Before he really knew her. When he was too busy in his own head and gearing up for a fight to listen. It makes him want to get his biggest gun and go to work. Makes him want to do damage.

“And I felt like that, I felt hurt, 90% of the time we were together. It shouldn’t be that way.”

“Why?” He asks, mouth in a flat line. “Why shouldn’t it tear you up? Why shouldn’t it feel like everything else in this stinking shit hole of a city?”

“Because.”

“Because, what?”

“Because it shouldn’t!” She’s leaning forward now, getting in his face, palms flat on the table, two red flags of color high in her cheeks. “Because the people who love you shouldn’t want it to.”  She stares at him and neither of them look away for one count, then two…

“Then I guess you convinced me.” Frank says, breaking the tension, digging into his mashed potatoes and reaching for a roll all at the same time. “You win.”

Karen looks annoyed as she swallows and sits back in her chair. Slowly getting her breath back as he starts shoveling baked chicken into his mouth. “Still a jerk, I see.” Her voice is hard.

Frank grunts, but doesn’t bother answering.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

Today they’re sitting on a bench in a fourth floor gallery that comes as close to empty as MoMA ever does. Their shoulders brush against one another as she watches him stare at a portrait. His eyes narrowed into slits so thin, it’s almost as if he thinks he can figure out the artists true meaning by sheer force of will. That, or he’s trying to make out the name on the card beneath it so he can personally go and beat it out of the man.

“I don’t get it,” he says loudly enough to draw the sharp gaze of a guard who, upon seeing Franks black eyes and busted lip, promptly looks back in the other direction. “Why do you like this shit?”

“It’s one of the good things about us. About humanity.” She can see by his face that he thinks whatever she’s about to say will be a waste of time, but he doesn’t try and stop her from getting it out. “We see the bad things people do during our…9 to 5’s,” he snorts at that. “But this is some of the best.” She meets his eyes, “Humans do evil, awful things, but we’re capable of this too. I just need a reminder of that sometimes.”

He doesn’t look convinced as he crosses his arms over his chest and eyes the other people in the room. “Isn’t it supposed to be more than that? Ain’t all this crap supposed to have some deeper meaning?”

“Sometimes. Or maybe there’s nothing to understand, Frank. Maybe it’s just a pretty picture.”

“That one ain’t so nice…” he mutters, motioning to one of the works on the wall in front of them and Karen brushes the hair out of her face, takes a breath. She brought him here because their first foray into the museum three days earlier had been a complete and total failure (and really, Karen has no clue what possessed her to think Frank would enjoy abstract art). She brought him here because he needed to get out in the sun every once in a while. She brought him here because he’s around and she’s tired of coming alone all the time. “You want to leave? We can go if you want to.”

“No,” he answers with more feeling than she would’ve thought this place could inspire in him. “I mean, the art’s obviously bullshit,” Karen rolls her eyes at that, “but it’s nice, quiet. I—I don’t mind it here.”

She guesses that’s as good a reason as any to stay and they slip into another, more comfortable silence.

“And that one’s not too bad,” he says after a while. Pointing to a photograph of a policemen in front of a group of protestors holding signs saying _Liberty or Death_. “I kinda like that one.”

“of course you do.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

“No. lay back.”

Karen isn’t the type of woman to take orders. She would’ve been kicked out of the marines within a month, he thinks, a spark of warmth he won’t examine too closely growing somewhere low in his chest. She looks like she's got other ideas on how this night should go, but she lets him have his way. Lays back into her pile of pillows and waits.

Earlier that night, he’d gotten out of his clothes quickly, but took his time stripping off hers. First the blouse, then the skirt. Both carefully folded before he laid them across the arm of a chair. She’d pulled him back onto the couch afterward, taken off her plain black bra and underwear on her own, grabbing at him the entire time, trying to hurry him along. His girl was impatient (and that’s what she was now, _his,_ whether they liked it or not). Kissed impatiently, too. Her mouth hot and needy. Humming in the back of her throat, trying to make him lose focus.

Well he’s got her where he wants her now.

On her back, right arm thrown over her head, knees bent and leaning toward where he’s sitting on the edge of her bed, eyes on him. She looks beautiful, perfect. Like one of the paintings in that museum she loves so much but better ‘cause she’s real and looking at him like she wants him. He knows he should do the right thing for once in his miserable life (leave now, never look back), but he can’t take his eyes off her and Frank might not go to hell for all the killing he’s done, but he knows he’ll burn for this.

He skims his hand along her stomach and the long line of her goes taut, waiting. But he doesn’t move, just looks. Catalogues her skin and even with all the shit she’s been through, there’s not a scratch on her. “Frank,” she mutters, and it takes him a moment to meet her eyes. Karen turns on her side and runs her hand down his spine, along his hip, checks his face before slipping it into his lap. Then she’s got her hand on his cock and that’s it. He’s through.

He reaches between her legs and she’s so wet his hand keeps slipping and then she’s laughing clear as a bell and working his dick until he can’t catch a breath and he hasn’t had a woman in over a year, not since Maria the night before the carousel. He can’t let it end here and it will if he doesn’t stop.

When he slips out of her reach, she makes a noise like she wants to yell at him. “Frank.”

“Just…” he trails off and kneels at the edge of the bed, grabs her hips and pulls her until they’re at a better angle. He helps her into the position he wants, bends her knees up before pressing them open, flat to the bed. “I need to see,” Frank says lowly. He can just barely make out a fine triangle of hair, but he can feel how wet she is. Smell how much she wants this.

“You look so fuckin’ good,” he groans and lowers his head. She’s not shy about wanting it either, the way some girls can be, about enjoying him. He doesn’t need to coax her into rolling her hips (her pussy slick and hot and drenched against his mouth) into putting him to good use, into taking her fill.

Frank turns his head, runs an edge of teeth along her inner thigh and if he moved even a fraction slower, she would’ve broken his nose the with the way she jerked up. He laughs then, an honest to shit chuckle, and grabs her hips with a little more force than he would’ve used even ten minutes earlier.

“Gottta hold you down, huh?” A frisson of excitement runs through him at the thought. “That what you want?”

“I want you to finish what you started,” she says. Her hands now less than gentle in his hair, but that’s okay. Frank likes that, too.

He leans forward slowly and kisses the red line his teeth left on her thigh, He can hear an ambulance outside the window, but he doesn’t care about anything but this. Not the scum infesting this city, not the fuckers who did this to him because he’s burned them to the ground, not his future because he doesn’t have one. This is everything. Every- _fucking_ -thing living that still matters. This apartment, this bed and the girl in it. Moaning and pulling his hair with her thighs spread wide for him. It’s enough. Right now, it’s enough.

He’s so lost in it, he doesn’t realize she’s come until Karen kicks him away and clenches her thighs tight, breathing hard. He’s breathing hard too, waiting for her to be ready for him. When she touches his shoulder and moves over to make room, he climbs up onto the bed and pulls her legs around his waist.

Looking at her in the dark, he wants to ask why she didn’t throw him out that night in her office. Why she didn’t call the cops after he left. Why she let him touch her at all, but he isn’t as dumb as people think. Frank knows better than to look a gift horse in the mouth. He drags his cock against her once, then again and again until her thighs shake. He angles himself and dips inside just a little. Just enough to make his teeth clench. “More?”

She looks at him with hooded eyes and reaches up to grab the bars of her head board, uses the heels of her feet to pull him in closer.

“More.”

 

* * *

 

 

He’s not next to her when she wakes up, but Karen can hear him moving around in the next room. Last night had been a bad idea, probably her worst since deciding to move to New York in the first place, but there was no use fretting over it now. What’s done is done. She sits up to grab her gown off the footboard and winces a little at the soreness between her legs. She’d been spectacularly stupid, but there was no denying that he was good. Really good. Definitely her best worst idea in a very long time. She’s never really had a man handle her the way he did. Like she’s a real life human and not some doll. Like Karen can take (and give) precisely the amount she says she can.

She pulls the gown over her head before that line of thought starts giving her any ideas and lays back, listening. Half of her expects (hopes) to hear the front door closing behind him with a click, but that’s not what happens. Karen’s never been lucky in that way.

Watching him move back into the room soundlessly, she realizes that he’s kind of graceful. It isn’t a word she would’ve ever used to describe him before tonight (brutal would win that prize), but Karen’s seen him handle a gun. Seen up close and personal what those hands are capable of, has felt them on her skin.

 _An elegant murderer_ , she thinks, because that’s what he is and it would be her dumbest move yet to forget it. Something thick rises in the back of her throat and she must move, make some sound, because he’s watching her now.

“Just making sure everything’s locked up.” He says, then licks his lips. “Got good windows, double-paned helps with the electricity bill.”

She stares at him like he’s speaking another language and blearily wonders if this is what awkward, morning after small talk with Frank Castle was like. Or maybe it’s just a _The Punisher_ thing. “Yeah,” Karen finally responds. “I’ve really noticed the difference between this place and the old one.”

He’s not fidgeting or biting his lips or wringing his hands (he’s as steady and straight-faced as ever) but for the first time since she’s met him, he seems uncomfortable. She isn’t quite sure what to make of that, but she knows what she wants. She knows she doesn’t want him to leave even though she made a very late new year’s resolution to stop caring about complicated men sometime in-between learning Matt’s secret (one of many, she’s sure) and the moment Frank slammed that cabin door in her face.

It doesn’t matter what she wants, she needs to tell him to leave.

“You can stay the night,” she says instead. “If you want to.”

He tilts his head. “I look like I’m going anywhere?”

Karen's heart kicks up, but she only shrugs as he steps forward and rubs the material of her gown between his fingers, “I don’t remember you having this on when I left.”

“I can’t sleep naked.” Not after…everything. She has to be ready (to fight, to run, to call for help) in an instant. Other people might be okay with brawling in the nude, but that’s where Karen draws the line.

“Mind if I do?”

He’s half hard and she reaches out for him. Runs her finger along a fat vein on the side and uses her thumb to spread a bead of pre-come across the head. He never tries to hurry her along or make her stop, but she can hear him keeping his breaths deep and even above her. When she looks up, he’s watching her face. “No.” She could bring him to her bed then. Pull him between her legs, take him in her mouth, but she keeps touching him because that’s what she wants. Listens to those controlled breathes take on a ragged edge and when she finally pulls back, he’s dripping.

Frank grabs the hem of the gown and starts pulling it up. “Take this granny shit off,” he mutters and Karen wants to argue its merits, but now is really not the time. It’s up and over her head and he’s on his back between her legs before she can think better of it. He drags his hands along the outside curve of her hips, over her ribs and up to her breasts. “I guess you got this all under control?”

“I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.” She says honestly. Not about tonight or anything else, but then he’s pushing inside of her and she can’t find it in herself to worry about it.


End file.
